


Here I Come

by yunyu



Series: The Sworn Brothers and the Qiao Sisters [2]
Category: Shin Sangokumusou | Dynasty Warriors
Genre: Age Difference, Arranged Marriage, Brotherhood, F/M, Fade to Black, Falling In Love, Humor, Innuendo, Male Friendship, Romance, Sun Ce and Zhou Yu are my BrOTP, Sun Ce does look like a goat sorry Da Qiao, Tea, Zhou Yu overthinks things like whoa, graphic descriptions of tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-14 00:18:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7144475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yunyu/pseuds/yunyu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He had been so confident, so sanguine when he agreed to marry the younger Qiao sister. One or two years or so would pass like nothing, and then he would have a docile, well-mannered wife from a prominent family who would bear and raise his children, and another connection to the Sun clan to boot. What an idiot he was, making plans like that without ever having even met her. And he pretended to be a strategist. She would never be docile, not that he even wanted that anymore. He hadn’t put the role of <i>wanting</i> into his decision making at all. Girls grew up into women, women submitted to sex, sex produced children. As if the dominoes would always fall that way, and all he had to do was be patient enough for time to set them up."</p><p>Sequel to "Ready or Not". Rated M for language and a lot of serious discussion of sex, but actual sex is fade to black (no lemons).</p><p>Xiao Qiao's prowess in the tea ceremony is inspired by John Woo's film <i>Red Cliff</i> but this fic is not otherwise related to that movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Bofu is Sun Ce's style name and Gongjin is Zhou Yu's. In Han dynasty culture, it was considered disrespectful to use the given name of someone of the same generation/rank or superior to yourself. At the same time, for a lord to use his men's style names shows respect and intimacy. I don't quite use style names authentically, but I like using them between Zhou Yu and Sun Ce.
> 
> I'm mostly picturing the Qiao sisters in their DW7 outfits (in Xiao Qiao's case, hers are described to be that way) and their husbands in their DW8 outfits.
> 
> This work contains some verbatim quotes from DW5 and DW8. Everything belongs to KOEI obviously.

In their first year as married men, when they were out at battle together, things seemed almost exactly the same, but every trip home forced Zhou Yu to confront just how much things had changed.

Sun Ce would get that grin on his face again, his attention wandering during councils. When they were within sight of home, no matter how long they had been traveling or how tired the horse was, Sun Ce would make it go as fast as he could, as if being able to kiss his wife ten minutes sooner was the most important thing in the universe.

Zhou Yu would keep his horse steady. It wasn’t that he didn’t like seeing his wife—she was a sweet girl, and could be very entertaining with her silly antics. But she was his wife in name only. She still had the body and mind of a child.

They parted before reaching either’s home this time, and Zhou Yu was relieved. It was very early spring, and it had been several months since the last time they’d been able to see their wives. Sun Ce had been absolutely disgusting that morning, and the last thing Zhou Yu wanted to see was his reunion with Da Qiao. Sure, in public she would just stand there, looking as proper and chaste as a block of ice, but if even half of what Sun Ce said when he was drunk was true—

Zhou Yu shook his head. He didn’t want to witness their public reunion, and here his brain was envisioning their private one. Human beings could be such ridiculous creatures.

They had ridden on ahead of the rest of the Wu forces, and thus when he arrived at his home, there was no entourage there waiting to receive him. A servant bowed, and informed him that the mistress and her sister were practicing.

“In the music room?”

“No, my lord, in the courtyard.”

“Don’t inform them yet. I’ll freshen up and surprise them.”

He went to his room to change, then stepped to his window and opened the shutters, where he looked down on the courtyard. He had faintly heard them, but not decipherable words.

They were sparring, taunting each other with silly little boasts—“Ready to go on a little trip?” “You can’t beat me!”—and Zhou Yu smiled, but then his smile suddenly froze.

It must just be his eyes playing tricks on him… or something about how her outfit was cut…

Yes, that was it. Just the way the jacket was cut on top, making her look like her chest had developed, and the crop top making it look like she had hips. She hadn’t really changed; she certainly hadn’t gotten any taller.

Just an optical illusion.

But he couldn’t stop staring. It was so… convincing…

Could it really have happened? After a year, could she finally be ready… well, not ready for him to just jump on top of her, like Sun Ce had done to Da Qiao on their wedding night, but ready for him to court her?

Xiao Qiao knocked one of her sister’s pugil sticks out of her hands, apparently ending the bout, as she began dancing and laughing. Da Qiao sighed, picked up the the stick and happened to look up and lock eyes with Zhou Yu. They stared at each other for a moment before she said, “Is that Lord Zhou Yu?!”

“Oh, hey, it is!” said Xiao Qiao, waving. “Hi! Welcome home!”

“Thank you,” he called. “It’s nice to be home and to see you both.”

“Is Lord Sun Ce with you?” Da Qiao blurted, then flushed and hurriedly made the bow she should have made in the first place. “I mean… I mean… it’s so wonderful to see that you made it home safely, brother-in-law… I’ve been staying here at your home while you were away, and it’s such a nice home…”

“You’re always welcome here, sister-in-law,” he said respectfully, before answering her real interest. “Your husband has gone to your own home.”

“Ah, of course he has,” she said. “I had better… I had better go home quickly and make sure everything is right for him, shouldn’t I?”

“Why can’t he just come here for dinner, sis?” said Xiao Qiao, putting her hands on her hips.

“He’s going to want to stay at home and relax after such a long time away,” Da Qiao explained, regaining some of her composure. “I should leave now to arrange our own dinner, in fact. Would you mind very much having my things packed up and sent over?”

Xiao Qiao’s face fell. “You’re not going to stay here anymore?!”

Da Qiao glanced from her sister to her brother-in-law and back. “Sis… you won’t need my company now…”

“Of course I do! Look, you just get Lord Sun Ce and bring him over. Then he can stay with my husband and you can keep staying with me!”

Da Qiao looked back at Zhou Yu, and he could tell she didn’t know what to say. 

“I’m sure they’ll stay with us another time, my dear,” he said carefully.

Xiao Qiao stared at the ground, and the contrast between the two sisters was as stark as ever. The older one, who couldn’t wait to get to her husband; the younger one, who was just as obviously wishing her husband hadn’t come back to spoil her fun.

So only her body had changed… nothing else…

———

Up until then, being a married man had been different externally from being a single man, but not internally. There had been an end to their “indiscreet harlots,” as Lady Wu had called them, since Sun Ce no longer wanted to chase girls and Zhou Yu had always been the follower, not the leader, in those particular exploits. His mind wasn’t badly tormented by this deprivation of feminine company. He had plenty to deal with during the day and his hand and a lot of memories at night. It wasn’t anything like torture; it was barely inconvenient.

Being around Xiao Qiao now became torturous.

The worst part was he knew he was becoming attracted to _her_ , not just to her newly blossoming body. Perhaps because she was missing the company of her sister, she was always trying to get his attention. At meals, she would say the strangest things, so that he couldn’t help but laugh; she would pick flowers and leave them in his room; she was sweet and kind, charming and considerate to their servants and tenants, and lavish in her affection for any and all animals; every time she saw him, her face lit up.

“Look at me, Lord Zhou Yu!” she would call, perched precariously at the top of a tree. “Look at this!” before executing a backflip.

At night, he would close his eyes and imagine those words in a very different tone of voice.

 _Look at me, Lord Zhou Yu._ He had never seen her naked, but his mind imagined every inch of her… especially her face full of desire for him. _Look at this._

He would let out a low groan as his hand would slide onto his erection.

Afterwards he would clean up and hate himself, swearing he wouldn’t think such sick, dirty thoughts about her anymore.

And every night he would break this promise.

———

When Sun Ce came to see him a few weeks after their return, he had left his wife in the company of her younger sister. He greeted his sworn brother with a big smile. “Heyyyyyy, congratulations!” he said.

“What are you talking about?” Zhou Yu said, dragging his spoon around in his nearly cold congee.

“Eating breakfast late, huh?” Sun Ce said, grabbing a pear from the fruit bowl and taking a seat opposite him at the table. “Better things to do at night than sleep, that’s for sure! It was worth the wait, right?”

Zhou Yu stared at him, but Sun Ce was leaning back in his chair looking up. “Hey, how long have you had this cool ceiling?”

“Bofu…”

Sun Ce didn’t look down, and took another bite of his pear. “I’m not kidding, I actually dig it!”

“Bofu, did you speak to my wife?”

Sun Ce looked down. “Uh, we said hi, I guess. She is really a stunner now! We’re the two luckiest men in China.”

“If you spoke to her, then you would know she hasn’t changed.”

Sun Ce was not necessarily the most perceptive man, but this was impossible to miss. “Hasn’t changed… Oh, fuck, man, I’m sorry,” he said seriously.

“Not as sorry as I am,” Zhou Yu said, and ate a spoonful of disgusting tepid congee.

“But hey, you know, the hourglass is going, right? The sand is moving, things are happening. It won’t be that much longer!”

Zhou Yu shook his head but said nothing.

“They grow up, you said it yourself!”

“But how will I know?” said Zhou Yu. “I thought… I thought when she developed I would be able to court her and then she would be able to tell me when she was ready, but she’s… she’s still a child… the way she looks at me hasn’t changed at all… I can’t take it and I can’t get away…” He dropped his spoon and rubbed his temples. “I can’t even play music without her running in and wanting to dance.”

“So just enjoy watching her dance, what’s the problem?”

“Because the way I think about her makes me feel sick!” Zhou Yu slammed his hand down on the table, rattling the spoon and making Sun Ce jump a little.

“Hey man… there’s nothing perverted about you being attracted to her… she’s your wife and she’s totally hot on the outside, at least.” Sun Ce was clearly doing his jocky best to be emotionally supportive, and it actually made Zhou Yu smile a little. “Uh… it’s like.. uh… there’s nothing sick about raw food making you hungry? Because it, uh, looks delicious, even though you can’t eat it yet?”

“Bofu, I appreciate the intention, but stop,” groaned Zhou Yu. “Please tell me you’ve come over here because you need me to plan some battles or something. The sooner we leave the better.”

“Well, no, actually. I was thinking we could spar and then you could come over to our place for dinner. Better yet, why don’t you and Xiao Qiao stay with us for a while? Then during the day Da Qiao can keep her occupied, at least. You and I could do some hunting!”

“That… is actually a good idea.”

Sun Ce grinned. “I do get them about once a year or so. But, uh, bring your flute because to hell with your wife, I want to see _mine_ dance.”

———

It really had been a good idea, Zhou Yu thought the next day. They had spent all day hunting, and now dinner was over and their wives were serving them tea.

Serving tea was the only thing that Xiao Qiao ever did calmly. It had been a real surprise, the first time she offered to make him tea; he had resigned himself to a broken dish or possibly even a burn. But she had some tranquility in her somewhere. She didn’t just do it efficiently, like a teahouse servant. Her movements were actually elegant, and the tea itself was always delicious—perfectly toasted, perfectly ground, perfectly whisked.

He looked over at Sun Ce, who was looking at his own wife offering him a cup of tea on her knees with a gaze that did not suggest any appreciation of artistry or restraint. 

“How was the hunt, my lord?” Da Qiao asked sweetly.

Xiao Qiao gave a little impatient cough, and he looked back to see that she was also kneeling before her husband, holding up his tea, but no longer looking quite so poised. He accepted the cup with such haste that a little actually sloshed out the side, and Xiao Qiao quickly stuck her finger in her mouth.

“Ah, Xiao Qiao, I’m sorry,” he said. “Did I burn you?”

“No, it’s not that hot by now,” she said, and there was a petulant edge to her voice. She brushed herself off as she got up, back to her usual way of moving.

Meanwhile, Sun Ce was going on and on about how long they had needed to search and his unerring instinct and a lot of other nonsense, ending with his proud boast that they had taken two deer.

“One deer,” corrected Zhou Yu.

Sun Ce shot his sworn brother a look. “Two deer!”

“The fawn doesn’t count,” said Zhou Yu, and sipped his tea.

“You killed a fawn?” demanded Xiao Qiao. “How could you do that?”

Sun Ce laughed. “It’s just an animal.”

“It’s a _baby_ animal!”

“Xiao Qiao,” said Zhou Yu calmly, “Once the mother has been killed you must kill the fawn. It would starve without her anyway.”

“You could have brought it home! I would have taken care of it!”

Sun Ce laughed again, but changed it into an unconvincing cough when he caught his wife’s eye.

“If it happens again I will,” promised Zhou Yu, and Xiao Qiao’s face lit up.

“Will you really, Lord Zhou Yu?” He couldn’t help himself from smiling back at her grateful delight.

“If you want a pet, sister-in-law, I’ll give you a tiger cub,” said Sun Ce, and now it was Zhou Yu’s turn to shoot him a look.

“My own tiger cub, really?” she squealed. “Oh thank you Lord Sun Ce! Thank you so much!”

“No problem,” said Sun Ce genially, avoiding looking at Zhou Yu or his wife. “When it gets bigger you can feed Gongjin’s baby deer to it.”

“I don’t understand how you can make a joke out of destroying something innocent,” complained Xiao Qiao, but she was still in a good humour, probably running through names for her future pet tiger.

“Gongjin’s always telling me the same thing,” Sun Ce said, but seemed to realize that he had gone a bit too far with that, because he actually met Zhou Yu’s death stare with a bit of a sheepish apology to his smile. Not that Zhou Yu was in any mood to accept it.

“Why don’t we have some music, Lord Zhou Yu?” suggested Da Qiao, getting up gracefully. “My lord told me you brought your flute, and I know my sister and I would love to dance for you.”

As Zhou Yu walked to get his flute, Xiao Qiao said, “I don’t want to dance right now, sis, but you go ahead and we’ll watch you.” He couldn’t help letting out a little sigh of relief that he wouldn’t have to watch her again.

“Are you sure?” said Da Qiao.  
  
“My feet hurt,” she replied, and she actually sounded a bit sad.

“Well.. alright.”

Da Qiao was a marvellous dancer, and to an artist at heart like himself, it was sheer pleasure to match his melody to her movements. Pure pleasure, too, unsullied by the baser thoughts that distracted him when it was Xiao Qiao dancing.

He heard a sigh, and turned his gaze to his sworn brother. Mentally he rolled his eyes. Apparently it wasn’t so pure to everyone.

His wife was in the same line of sight as Sun Ce. She was looking at Zhou Yu… no, she was looking at his flute, watching it intently. She was moving her fingers in her lap, and Zhou Yu realized she was trying to copy his movements. He had to look away because the slight delay between his fingers’ movements and hers was upsetting his sense of rhythm, nearly making him make a mistake.

He regained his focus and was able to keep it for the remainder of the song. Da Qiao assumed a posture as he trilled the last note that managed somehow to be frozen and ethereal at the same time.

Sun Ce wolf whistled, and his wife turned as red as her coat. “Lord Sun Ce!” she said, embarrassed.

“What?” he said. “I thought that was great!”

“It’s wasted on him, sister-in-law,” Zhou Yu said with a smile. “I thought it was lovely.”

She bowed to his praise of her artistic merit. “I am honoured, my lord.”

“Hey, my praise should mean more than his,” protested Sun Ce.

Da Qiao giggled. “You would have liked it no matter what.”

Suddenly Sun Ce did a very unconvincing yawn and stood up. “Wow, I’m suddenly feeling really beat. Must be all that hunting. Da Qiao, are you ready for bed?”

“Sis, you said you would come to my room after dinner, before bed. You promised!” said Xiao Qiao urgently.

“I did promise,” Da Qiao admitted, giving her husband a placating look. “It’s still very early, my lord. An hour or two… not that you can’t go to bed now if you’re so tired…”

Sun Ce was stuck. He glanced at Zhou Yu for help avoiding having to go to bed alone, but his sworn brother was in the mood for a little petty revenge and studiously ignored him as he put away his flute. “Well, I guess I’ll just head to bed by myself then,” he said, frowning as he left, but he paused at the door. “I’ll be well-rested later, Da Qiao.”

“Goodnight, my lord!” his wife laughed.

He smirked at her and left. The two sisters also quickly left, leaving Zhou Yu alone in the room. He ran his fingers over a _qin_ that was set up as decoration. It had been beautifully made, but mistreated at some point. Instead of being allowed to age gracefully into a fine patina of cracks, something had gone wrong, perhaps with how it was stored, and the wood underneath had been damaged in such a way that he was not sure if it could ever be tuned properly. What a waste.

The room was so silent, and Zhou Yu realized that he had punished himself as much as Sun Ce by not providing a way for his sworn brother to save face without going to bed. They could have talked or drank or played go. Now he had nothing to do either.

He got the flute back out and played a sad, slow melody. Something he couldn’t possibly picture her dancing to.

When it was finished, he felt so alone. The time stretching out before him that evening until his body got tired enough to sleep suddenly seemed to mirror the years ahead of him. He had been so confident, so sanguine when he agreed to marry the younger Qiao sister. One or two years or so would pass like nothing, and then he would have a docile, well-mannered wife from a prominent family who would bear and raise his children, and another connection to the Sun clan to boot.

What an idiot he was, making plans like that without ever having even met her. And he pretended to be a strategist. She would never be docile, not that he even wanted that anymore. He hadn’t put the role of _wanting_ into his decision making at all. Girls grew up into women, women submitted to sex, sex produced children. As if the dominoes would always fall that way, and all he had to do was be patient enough for time to set them up.

Yesterday he had complained to Sun Ce that he didn’t know how he would know that Xiao Qiao was ready to be wooed by him, since her body had developed while they were apart yet she still wasn’t interested. Tonight an even worse fear was gripping him. Maybe she would _never_ be interested… eternally a child inside… innocent and sweet and so fucking cute he thought he would die…

Die or destroy that innocence.

He felt sick again. It had only been few weeks that she had aroused his lust and already he was unable to stop himself from fantasizing about taking her when he touched himself. What if he really lost control? Nobody could protect her from him.

Zhou Yu took a deep breath, held it, and let it out slowly. He needed to get a grip on himself and stop catastrophizing. Before he had blithely assumed one scenario—now he was letting himself think a worst-case scenario was a certainty, on very little actual evidence. He knew his own intellectual development had far outpaced his physical development until he was sixteen or so, so why couldn’t it be the reverse with her? Why torment himself like this, when it could easily resolve itself at any point, as long as he kept being a good husband who didn’t rush her?

He decided to stop by his wife’s room and say goodnight, then retire and spend some time meditating.

As he approached her room, he was surprised to hear someone playing a rendition of the same traditional melody that he had been playing for Da Qiao’s dance. The instrument was inferior and the player did not know circular breathing, adding awkward pauses to the music; the fingering of notes requiring half-open holes was imprecise, and the tonguing really needed work… he smiled ruefully, acknowledging that his reputation of extreme fastidiousness with regard to music was well-deserved. He stopped outside the door to listen, honestly intending to knock as soon as the song was over.

Yet he did not. “That was really good!” said Da Qiao’s voice, just audible through the closed door.

“You’re just saying that,” said Xiao Qiao’s voice, its higher pitch and more strident timbre more clearly discernible.

“No, I’m not. You didn’t play a single wrong note that time! You are improving so fast! Just think of how much better you sound now than a few months ago.”

“Well, there’s nothing impressive about that,” said Xiao Qiao grumpily. “If I had paid attention to our music tutor years ago, then I would already be far beyond this.”

“But think how pleased Lord Zhou Yu will be when you play for him. I think it’s so sweet that you’re trying to learn just to surprise him.”

Xiao Qiao laughed, but it wasn’t like any other laugh he had ever heard from her. It actually sounded forced, false. “Well, when I’m fifty-seven years old and finally advanced enough to be worth listening to, I bet he will be surprised.”

“Don’t tease yourself, sis,” said Da Qiao. “He will love it! Husbands adore that kind of thing.”

“Hey, sis, what kind of surprises are you giving Lord Sun Ce?” said Xiao Qiao, the humour in her voice no longer forced.

“Nothing!” laughed Da Qiao.

“Mm-hmm,” said Xiao Qiao skeptically. “Keeping secrets from me again. Marriage sure has changed you.”

“Well, I haven’t done anything as impressive as this.”

“Yeah, but Lord Sun Ce likes you just the way you are,” said Xiao Qiao, flatly.

“Yes,” sighed Da Qiao happily.

“And do you like him the same? You never wish he was different?”

“No, I wouldn’t change a single thing.”

“Not even his beard? I mean, it makes him look like a goat.”

“Lord Sun Ce does not look like a goat!” gasped Da Qiao.

“When we first met them, all I could think when I looked at him was ‘mehhhhhhh,’” said Xiao Qiao, ending with a goat-like bleat. Outside the door, Zhou Yu was biting a knuckle to keep from laughing.

_“He does not look like a goat!”_

“He does too, but whatever. Better you than me.”

“Lord Sun Ce is the handsomest man I’ve ever met!”

“Wow, love really is blind,” marvelled Xiao Qiao, and Zhou Yu drew a little bit of blood from his knuckle. But he stopped wanting to laugh as she went on. “You can’t really think he holds a candle to Lord Zhou Yu, do you?”

“Well, if you like men to be _pretty…”_ said Da Qiao scathingly.

“Lord Zhou Yu is perfect.” There was no boast or swoon to her voice. As if it was a simple statement of fact to her. _Tigers belong to the cat family. Two plus two is four. Lord Zhou Yu is perfect._

“Perfect?” said Da Qiao, and Zhou Yu could hear that her tone had changed as well. She was no longer zealously defending her man; instead it sounded like she was as curious about Xiao Qiao’s thoughts on Zhou Yu as he was.

“Yes, perfect,” said Xiao Qiao, with a bit of tremble in her voice. “Elegant, talented, handsome, smart, artistic, educated… masterful… I can’t even come up with the words… I’m probably too dumb to know them…”

There was a sudden loud crack, which made Zhou Yu start back a little from the door.

“Sis, you broke your flute! Why—“ But Da Qiao broke off, because her sister was crying.

“What’s the point, sis? I’m never going to be good enough for him to listen to. I should stop wasting my time.”

“Don’t cry… Sis, it doesn’t matter. Forget about the flute. He never has to know about it… you can… you can come up with something else…”

“But I’m not good at _anything_! Did you see his face when I said I wasn’t going to dance tonight? He was so relieved… he didn’t know I was watching him…”

“Your dancing is beautiful! I know Lord Zhou Yu thinks so!”

“He doesn’t, he doesn’t! It disgusts him. He just pretends he enjoys it to be kind. My dancing isn’t sophisticated and refined, like yours is… it’s stupid, everything I do is stupid…”

Zhou Yu was actually getting lightheaded from forgetting to breathe. He took in a sudden gasp and was amazed that the girls inside didn’t hear it, it sounded so loud to him.

“You are sweet and kind and you are good at lots of things!”

“Name even one thing that I’m good at!”

“Serving tea,” said Da Qiao immediately. “You’re better than me at that. Everyone loves how you serve tea.”

“A servant could do that,” said Xiao Qiao dismissively. “Lord Zhou Yu isn’t impressed with that. Only disgusting old men like Cao Cao would think it’s impressive that a girl can pour water.”

“Sis, you even make me laugh when you’re so unhappy,” said Da Qiao. “Isn’t that a talent?”

“Yes, I make you laugh, I make him laugh… I’m just a big clown to everybody, aren’t I?”

“Oh, sis…!”

“You should go,” said Xiao Qiao bitterly. “All I’m doing is keeping Lord Sun Ce waiting now, right? You should go… you make him happy, and he makes you happy…”

Zhou Yu backed away from the door and walked quietly but quickly towards his own rooms not far away. While Da Qiao probably wouldn’t immediately abandon her sister, she could at any point acquiesce to a demand to leave her sister alone, and the last thing he wanted was to be caught out in his eavesdropping.

She loved him, she wanted his attention… she had it all backward, she thought his avoidance of her was from disgust, instead of trying to avoid temptation, but now that he knew, now that he knew!

He was in his rooms now, pulling his clothing off mindlessly, seeking the distraction free embrace of his bed.

Now that he knew… he knew…

But what did he know, really?

Was he jumping from worst case to best case again?

He climbed into the bed and stared at the dim surroundings, trying as best he could to remember verbatim every word they had said.

_I’m probably too dumb to know them… I’m never going to be good enough for him… I’m not good at anything… everything I do is stupid… Lord Zhou Yu isn’t impressed with that._

She wanted his attention, approval, pride… but did that mean she wanted him as a lover? Couldn’t she have spoken all of that just as innocently about a brother?

But would she have mentioned how handsome a brother was?

_Lord Sun Ce is waiting…You should go… you make him happy, and he makes you happy…_

Could she have said that because she knew exactly what Sun Ce was waiting for, how they would make each other happy? Was she wishing she could do the same with Zhou Yu?

He groaned. Hearing her crying because she thought her dancing disgusted him… how he longed to show her exactly what her dancing made him want to do to her… to thrust into her tiny body…

Zhou Yu shuddered at his own depravity. How had he already gotten to the point where her smallness itself excited him? He had never chased girls like her before, always prided himself on not wanting to taint innocence, truly thought he was only attracted to bold, mature, experienced women. Not virgins. 

Not a little maiden whose cute face pressed into his chest when she hugged him, who felt as fragile as a small bird in his arms.

_Poshen, poshen… you disgusting pervert, you really want to break her apart just to satisfy your filthy lusts!_

Why couldn’t he think about her rationally? What a terrible husband he was. He hadn’t even noticed the pain she was in, how badly she craved his attention and love. But how could he fulfill her needs without losing control of himself? Avoiding her had been the only way he knew to hold on.

He took another calming breath. “I’m not an animal,” he had told Sun Ce with contempt before their wedding. Alright, now was his chance to prove it. That he could have self-control, and fulfill her needs without regard to his own desires.

He would pay attention to her, show his affection for her, his approval of her, and then… and then…

Maybe she would respond in a way that he would finally know…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Poshen_ 破身 literally means "break the body" and is a slang/dysphemism for losing virginity.


	2. Chapter 2

A knock at the door woke him up. “Who is it?” he said groggily.

The door opened and Sun Ce came in. “You’re still asleep, bro?”

Zhou Yu rubbed his eyes. “I didn’t know ‘who is it’ meant ‘come on in’ in Sun language,” he said sarcastically.

“Well I figured you’d be up by now,” he said, throwing open the shutters, the light making Zhou Yu wince. “Are you sick or something? You never sleep late.”

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” he muttered.

“Is it about Xiao Qiao?”

“Bofu, leave me alone,” he groaned, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands.

“Hey, I just want to make sure you’re ok,” he said, lounging on a couch in a way that indicated that he was not going to be driven off easily. “I’m supposed to be the big brother in this relationship, right?”

“Do you torment Sun Quan like this?”

“Much worse,” Sun Ce grinned. “He’s got more buttons to push than you do.” He paused, but when Zhou Yu didn’t say anything, he said, “Listen, I know you don’t think Xiao Qiao is ready, but maybe you should try spending more time with her doing adult things.”

Zhou Yu shot him a horrified look, and Sun Ce laughed. “My god, sex isn’t the only adult thing! You’re more perverted than I am! I mean actually try to get to know her, y’know, talk to her. Teach her to play go, or something.”

“Da Qiao put you up to this,” Zhou Yu said, not as a question.

Sun Ce lifted his hands in mock surrender. “Yeah, yeah, she did! You can’t blame me—I’d have promised to bring her down a piece of the moon after she—”

“Bofu!” Zhou Yu cut him off. “You’re not drunk right now, I hope, so please refrain from telling me whatever degrading acts you forced her to perform.”

Zhou Yu expected Sun Ce to laugh, or maybe roll his eyes—not to look furious. “There’s nothing degrading about what I do with my wife,” he said.

Zhou Yu sighed. “I know, I know… you exaggerate… I didn’t mean anything—“

“I don’t exaggerate,” Sun Ce said, his anger not lessening. “And I don’t force her to do anything. Why would you think that?”

Zhou Yu didn’t know what to say. He’d never seen Sun Ce look this angry with him before.

“I love my wife, and she is my _wife_. Nothing I’ve done with her makes her less of a lady. Nothing we do together degrades her. Do you understand me?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t ask if you were sorry, I asked if you understood me.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You better never give anyone else so much as a hint that you don’t respect Da Qiao,” said Sun Ce, not looking mollified. “I’ll kick your ass until you thank me for it.”

“I do respect her, Bofu, I just thought…”

“Be careful how you finish that sentence,” he snarled.

Zhou Yu sighed. “I don’t know. I know she adores you, so I just figured she went along with it because she wanted to please you. I felt bad for her that your desires were so depraved, that was all.”

To his surprise, that made Sun Ce laugh. “Oh wow, bro, if you could see me and her together, you wouldn’t think she was long-suffering. The craziest ideas come from her!”

Zhou Yu couldn’t help but look skeptical, and Sun Ce shook his head. “Maybe this is half your problem, you have this idea that they only submit to it because they want to please us and that there’s something disgusting about it. Believe me, they can enjoy it just as much. Hell, more! It’s not fair, how they can have orgasms one after the other without having to take a break in between.” He started to laugh again. “Gongjin, your eyes look like they’re going to pop out of your head! Little innocent!”

“Shut up.” Zhou Yu flushed and tried to recover his sangfroid. “I know women can have multiple orgasms.”

“Book learning isn’t everything,” taunted Sun Ce.

Sun Ce had more of a point than he knew. Zhou Yu had read taoist sex manuals, of course—what literate teenage boy could resist that temptation—but although the sex manuals emphasized the importance of making the woman feel pleasure, somehow they made that seem like the most degrading thing of all. The text he had read the most usually referred to the woman as “the enemy”, in fact; the goal was to steal away as much of her energy as possible without losing _jing_ and _qi_ to her in return. To a strategist like himself, the idea of sex as a battle had taken hold of his erotic imagination strongly. With the bold, self-assured widows and traveling merchant’s wives who responded or even initiated connections with him in the past, sex had just been fun, and he’d been able to ignore this concept of sex as total destruction of the enemy.

But an innocent little virgin like Xiao Qiao was exactly what the manuals had all been talking about.

How long had _that_ been bubbling under his consciousness? Maybe that was part of why he never even fantasized about her doing much more than enduring his attentions, why he was left feeling sickest when he imagined her orgasming… because he felt like to make her enjoy it would be to humiliate and destroy her…

“What’s going on in that pale head of yours?” Sun Ce interrupted his epiphany.

“Well, you’ve read taoist sex books, right…”

“No.” He caught his brother’s skeptical glance, and laughed. “Ok, maybe just to look at the pictures, but nothing more than that. Magic is a bunch of nonsense, and anyway, I’m not interested in immortality if the price of admission is having sex without cumming. I’d rather die young and happy.”

“Don’t tempt fate.”

“Don’t try to make this about me. You’re the messed-up one here, for once.”

Zhou Yu sighed. “You are the worst person I could be talking to about this.”

“Well, who else are you going to talk to about it? My mother is probably still up for it, if you want someone to tell you sex is filthy.”

“Oh god, Bofu, I thought we agreed never to bring that up again.”

“Well, thank your lucky stars that she hasn’t brought the topic up with you again. Every time I see her she wants to tell me why Da Qiao isn’t pregnant yet and what I need to do to fix that.”

“Don’t you _dare_.”

“I won’t. See? I’m a good big brother.”

“Let’s spar after breakfast,” said Zhou Yu, getting out of bed at last. “I will feel much better after I beat you up.”

“I’ve already eaten, but just come and find me when you’re done and we’ll see who gets beaten up.”

———

“Good morning, Lord Zhou Yu!” his wife said brightly.

He was a bit surprised, both at her still eating breakfast and at her cheerful demeanour. “Ah, good morning, Xiao Qiao. Did you sleep well?”

“Not too bad!” she said. Ordinarily he would not have been looking at her closely enough to see the cracks in her happy mask, but this morning he was looking for them and sure enough, they were there. “Shall I make you tea?”

“You’re still eating,” he pointed out. “Maybe I could make you some?”

Her spoon slipped out of her hand and clattered in the bowl. “Y-you don’t have to do that,” she stammered.

“You always make tea so perfectly,” he said calmly. “I thought maybe you could teach me how to do the same, so I can drink your tea even when you’re not with me.”

“Oh, well…! It’s not difficult…” She was so adorably flustered.

“Don’t say that,” he said reprovingly. “Then if I can’t figure out, I’ll feel stupid.”

He picked up the round tea cake and the tea needle and began to insert the needle, trying to think of a mistake he could make to allow her to correct him, when she interrupted him.

“Not there!” she said, then as he looked up, flushed. “I’m sorry.”

“No, the tutor must be able to correct her student,” he said with a smile. “Teacher Qiao, please tell me what I am doing wrong.”

She giggled and seemed to relax at his teasing address of her. “You see, there are already two holes, here and here,” she explained. “You shouldn’t create another hole, it will spoil the look of the cake.”

“The look?”

“Yes, the engraving on the front, and the shape, are very beautiful, don’t you think?”

He looked down at the cake. He had seen beauty in her movements during the brewing of tea, the scent, and the swirl of the powder in the cup, but never thought to look for it in the brick.

“The _bing_ shape is more difficult than a rectangular brick,” she continued, “so, if you find the needle isn’t working, you may need to use the knife. You’re so strong, you may break off the needle if you’re not careful. That’s not very tasty.”

“No,” he laughed. “I thought you said this wasn’t difficult!”

“I guess I never really thought about trying to teach it,” she said. “Why don’t I show you and you can copy me?”

He watched her nimble, confident fingers take up the needle. “This is the right angle,” she said, demonstrating the correct way, “not like this or this, or this, or this,” she continued and demonstrated several wrong ways. “Look at the lines of the leaves, it should form a right angle here. And put the other hand like this, no closer. That way if the needle or knife moves unexpectedly, you won’t cut yourself.” She paused. “That may be harder for you, since your hands are so much bigger.”

Deftly, she broke off a perfectly sized piece from the tea cake and set it aside. “Your turn!”

He picked up the brick and mimicked her hold on the needle and tea cake, and inserted the needle at the suggested angle. The piece he broke off shattered as the needle ripped through it.

“That’s ok!” his teacher said quickly. “At least you didn’t cut yourself! Try again, a little more gently.”

“ _You’re_ too gentle, Teacher Qiao,” he teased her. “Shouldn’t I have been hit several times by now?”

“Not when you’re holding a needle!” she teased back. “I don’t want to get poked by you!”

Her unintentional innuendo resulted in another shattered piece of tea. 

“Try the knife instead,” she said blithely.

He took a breath and tried the needle one more time. This time he produced a passable piece of tea.

“Perfect,” she said, clapping. “Now, toasting. This part isn’t difficult, it just takes practice. The trick is getting it evenly toasted, without any burnt or raw spots. You really have to concentrate and use your eyes and your nose. Nose is more important.”

“Is it?”

“Yes, especially with black tea like this, the visual difference between raw and burnt is very slight,” she said. As she held the tea over the flame, the familiar scent of the toasting tea began to fill his nostrils. “Guess when you think it’s done.”

He waited, watching intensely. “Now?”

“Perfect again!” she said. “You have a natural appreciation for perfection, Lord Zhou Yu!”

He did not know how to respond to this compliment, in light of the fact that he knew that she believed herself to be so grotesquely imperfect.  
  
“We have to grind now without letting you try toasting,” she continued. “This part isn’t difficult at all, as long as you mix well as you grind, so that it is done evenly.”

“May I?”

She relinquished the pestle to him, and turned her attention to boiling the water.

“For this tea, the water needs to be boiling, which is easiest. You just wait until it stops making bubbles and noise.”

She took a ladleful of the boiling water and used it to rinse out and warm the cup. “Now you dry the bowl, otherwise the powder will start to dissolve too soon,” she said, smoothly wiping it out with the cloth. “But don’t take too long, because the heat is already going away, right? So everything else has to be ready.”

Deftly she scooped the tea from his mortar, ladled in the water, and picked up the whisk.

“This is the motion,” she said, moving the whisk back and forth. “Push it all the way in, and back and forth like this.”

“Uh huh,” he said. He had never realized that making tea had so many opportunities for double entendre. 

“Don’t twirl the whisk in a circle,” she said. “Back and forth. You don’t have to be violent about it. The powder loves the water.”

“Does it really?” he said, amused.

“Oh yes,” she said with a grin. “They want to be together, see? Making cute little bubbles.”

He laughed. “How sweet.”

“Mm-hmm!” she said. “And when you see the bubbles, you keep whisking but pull out slowly like this, to finish the surface. And that’s all for the whisking! And then if you’re just making it for yourself, you can drink it.” She picked up the cup. “But you should still take time to appreciate it!”

He watched as she looked intently into the cup. “What do you see there?”

“It’s like clouds in the sky,” she said. “Do you ever look up at the sky and think you see shapes in the clouds?” Suddenly she reddened. “I guess only little kids do that.”

“It would be a sad world if only children experienced wonder,” he said. “Don’t you think so?”

She smiled shyly, then closed her eyes and inhaled the scent. 

“And what do you smell?”

“I like to think about where the tea was grown,” she said, eyes still closed. “And everything the tea plant experienced as it grew… the rain and the sun and the wind… the hands that picked the leaves, and the place where the tea was dried and pressed… and if it came from far away, all the lands that it traveled through on the way to my cup.”

“You can smell all of that?”

She giggled. “Well, maybe I don’t, but I like to think I do…” She opened her eyes and lifted it the rest of the way to her lips for a small first sip. “And then, you know, don’t drink it too fast, either. Savour it.” She looked down at his piece of tea, still where he had left it. “Would you like to try making a cup now?”

Silently he made another cup, and she didn’t say a single word in praise or censure. He stared into the swirl of the finished cup, appreciating as he had never done before its colour and depths, and then closed his eyes to smell. At first he simply identified the scent as good quality tea, but then he started picking out more subtle scents. He could easily see how an imaginative girl like Xiao Qiao could write a story from such scents… there was an aroma that was a bit like rice, and he found himself thinking about the tea pickers taking a break to eat lunch.

He opened his eyes as he took a sip and saw that Xiao Qiao was signalling to a servant. “We need more food,” she said. “Lord Zhou Yu’s breakfast has gotten all cold.”

The servant bowed, but Zhou Yu said, “No, I don’t mind. I don’t want it to be wasted.”

The servant bowed again and departed, and Xiao Qiao bit her lip and looked down.

“That was very thoughtful of you,” he said quickly, realizing that his immediate contradiction of her order had made her lose face. “I guess as a soldier I’m used to having my food get cold before I can eat it.”

“That’s not good for your health,” she told her own half-empty bowl of cold congee.

Now he felt even worse. He had interrupted her meal for an extended tea session and he hadn’t even thought about her when she attempted to request a replacement. “Xiao Qiao, I forgot you weren’t done eating. I’ll call the servant back.”

“No, I’m done,” she said, and stood up. “Sis will be wondering where I am anyway. We’re going into the town to do some shopping!”

“New clothes?”

“No, supplies for my pet tiger!” she said joyously as she left.

Zhou Yu ate a rice roll and mentally added his wife’s new pet to his motivational factors for beating up Sun Ce.

———

While his wife and sister-in-law were out, Lu Su arrived, and Sun Ce summoned Zhou Yu to listen to his proposal.

Now that they had finished dealing with Li Shu’s rebellion, the time was ripe to turn again to Jiangxia and Huang Zu. Not only did Sun Ce have a personal grudge against Huang Zu for his father Sun Jian’s death, but the conquest of Jiangxia would consolidate the Sun family’s control over the lands south of the Yangtze River.

They were talking outside, having interrupted Sun Ce and Zhou Yu sparring, and with his rake slung across his shoulders as he stared out at the fields, Lu Su looked more like a farmer reporting on the harvest than a strategist.

“Huang Zu has the advantages of vast man power, a superior fleet, excellent fortifications, and natural chokepoints,” said the older man cheerfully.

“You seem rather calm about that,” said Sun Ce.

Zhou Yu smiled as well. “It is these very advantages that make a man like him the most vulnerable.”

“Spot on,” said Lu Su. “At the slightest sign of things going wrong, he will lose his head.”

“Therefore the best approach is a rapid strike with a relatively small force,” said Zhou Yu. “Pierce his lines and charge Huang Zu directly. If he panics, we can rout him. What’s more, if the attack fails, we lose very little.”

“To be of one mind with you, Lord Zhou Yu, is an honour,” said Lu Su, with a bow. “I wonder if you approve of my choice of Ling Cao as the vanguard leader?”

Zhou Yu considered it. “It should be the unquestionable choice, but I am concerned about how the Shanyue tribes will react if he is diverted to Jiangxia, even temporarily. He has been better at keeping them pacified than any other commander we have ever assigned to the area.”

“Who else, then? Taishi Ci?”

“He lacks naval ability. Lu Meng?”

Lu Su shook his head. Zhou Yu knew that Lu Su lacked respect for the rough, uneducated Lu Meng.

“I think Ling Cao is the way to go,” said Sun Ce. “Besides, you said yourself it’s going to be a quick strike. We’ll get in, kill Huang Zu, and Ling Cao will be back at his post just in time to slay any Shanyue who come out to raid our people’s rice fields. Win win!”

———

The Qiao sisters arrived back to see a flurry of activity was taking place, messengers coming and going. They handed off their packages and came in to a house filled with military officers, with more arriving.

“Ah, Da Qiao!” said Sun Ce cheerily. “Sorry to spring this on you, but we’re having quite a full house for dinner tonight. Don’t worry about all the hostess stuff! The servants have that taken care of. You just stay by my side and look beautiful.”

Her lower lip trembled. “Are you going off to war again, my lord?”

He scratched his head. “Well, yeah, but it’s going to be a quick battle this time. Nothing to it!”

“Excuse me,” she said, slipping out from his arm around her shoulder, “I should change for dinner.”

She fled even as he protested that she looked fine, and he moved up from scratching his head to tugging his ponytail. “What’s up with her?”

“Dummy!” said Xiao Qiao, making Zhou Yu nearly choke on his wine. “She’s upset about being separated from you!”

“Well, I’m not thrilled about that part of it either,” growled Sun Ce, clearly embarrassed that this little scene was taking place in front of all of his officers. “She’ll get over it.”

“You should just take us with you!” said Xiao Qiao, and Zhou Yu nearly choked on his wine again, but not from laughing this time.

“Isn’t that cute,” said Han Dang with an indulgent chuckle. “I wish my wife was as eager to be with me. Sometimes when I come back it’s like she didn’t remember I left…”

“We’re not just cute!” Xiao Qiao crossed her arms and tilted her head, undermining her message with how unbearably adorable this posture made her look. “We can fight!”

This time the indulgent chuckle came from every man in the room except Sun Ce and Zhou Yu. Xiao Qiao’s eyes flashed. “Lord Sun Ce knows we can fight. If he leaves us here just to please all of you, then he’s just being _stupid!_ ”

With that, she too left, although with angry stomps rather than how her sister seemed to elegantly sail from the room like a ghost.

Zhou Yu looked at Sun Ce and saw to his horror that his sworn brother was really thinking. Before he could come up with some way to knock this idea out of his head before it took root, a servant had come in to announce dinner.

———

“How are your feet, Xiao Qiao?”

His wife had pouted all through dinner, but at this question from her husband her face clouded with confusion. “My feet? My feet are fine.”

He smiled. “I’m relieved. Lord Sun Ce will want me to play my flute again now that dinner is over, and I was hoping I would get to show off your dancing to everyone.”

Her face turned pink. “Show _me_ off?” she squeaked.

“Your dancing is so different,” he said honestly. “It shows the beauty of your heart. It would be selfish of me to keep that all to myself.”

She stared at the ground. “I didn’t think you liked my dancing…”

He reached out and lifted up her chin with one finger. “I adore it, I simply can’t watch you as much as I would want to, or I would lose concentration on my playing,” he said, wondering if his eyes were telling her, _I adore you._

She turned even pinker, and he pulled his hand away before he succumbed to the temptation to lean down and kiss her. “I’m distracting?”

He laughed. “Maddeningly!”

“Ok, well, don’t watch me too closely tonight then!” she said, her bad mood vanished. “You can’t play any wrong notes. I want to show you off too!”

Da Qiao asked Zhou Yu to play a certain melody inspired by the legend of Ehuang and Nüying, sisters who became goddesses of the Xiang river when they wept themselves to death out of grief for their mutual husband, the legendary Emperor Shun, who had died on his way to battle. Whether this was meant as a passive aggressive message to Sun Ce or not, it was a piece that was uniquely suited to showcasing the complementary talents of the sisters—Da Qiao as the radiant, elegant older sister Ehuang, and Xiao Qiao as the bold, spirited younger sister, Nüying. Their pantomime of profound sadness was so moving that not even Zhou Yu felt any carnal temptations as he watched them.

After the dance was over and the women accepted the sincere acclamations of their audience, Xiao Qiao came back to earth from her portrayal of the divine Nüying when she said, “Imagine being married to the same man as your sister. Gross.”

Even Da Qiao had to laugh at that. “Yes, I’m glad they don’t make women do that anymore.”

“Yeah, I mean, being a woman sucks enough as it is.” She sighed and frowned, clearly remembering that being a woman was going to keep her from following the men to battle. “Well, sis, how about you come back to my room with me and we can giggle and faint and all that womanly stuff, while the big bad men belch and talk about sticking swords into things?”

“Sounds good to me,” said Da Qiao coolly, looking at her husband as she rose.

Sun Ce looked very much like he wanted to say something, but didn’t, and the ladies left.

———

After the officers left, Sun Ce turned to Zhou Yu, but Zhou Yu spoke first.

“I have two words for you: _fuck no._ ”

“Gongjin, she did have a point! They _can_ fight, better than most of the men in the army!”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Zhou Yu. “They know how to fight so they can defend themselves against capture, not so they can get turned into pincushions on the front lines.”

“I didn’t say I would put them on the front lines! I’m just saying… why _shouldn’t_ they come with us? And it’s not like this is going to be the kind of fight where our camp would get raided. Hell, I’d probably feel more confident knowing they were surrounded by soldiers than left with just servants at our estates!”

Zhou Yu did not know how to react to this. He had not expected there to be any logical reasons why the sisters should come with them. “They’re too young.”

“Fifteen and sixteen isn’t too young! We were both fighting on the front lines by then.” As Zhou Yu opened his mouth, Sun Ce added, “And I’m not putting them on the front lines! Hell, for this kind of attack, I’m not going out on the front lines either.” Suddenly his eyes shone. “Hey, wouldn’t that be sexy as hell? I mean, I know Da Qiao knows I can fight, but she’s never _really_ seen me in action. I wonder if she’ll be able to hold on until we get back to the boat…”

Zhou Yu stared at him. “Bofu, you’ve gone mad.”

“If I’m so mad then give me some actual reasons why this is a bad idea,” he said. “Other than ‘they’re women’ and ‘they’re too young’ which I’ve already shot down.”

“Because how can you subject someone you love to that kind of danger?”

“What, you think I don’t give a shit about you, or my brother, or any of my other officers? Should I make all of you stay at home too? Ok, yeah, it’s dangerous, but everything about this whole fucking world is dangerous. I’d rather have my wife at my side than anywhere else!”

“At your side? In your cabin?”

“Hell yeah,” he said, and cracked a smile. “I gotta admit that was the most appealing part about the idea, but I’ve been thinking and thinking about it and I’m not just thinking with my cock for once, I actually think it makes sense!”

“Because what am _I_ supposed to do in my cabin with Xiao Qiao?”

That deflated Sun Ce. “Ohhhhh yeah… but you slept in the same bed on your wedding night, right?”

“That was different,” said Zhou Yu through gritted teeth. “You know it was different.”

Sun Ce sighed. “Alright, alright. Man! I hope you and Lu Su are right about this being quick.”


	3. Chapter 3

Over the next few days, as the ordeal of packing, planning, training, and preparing for the move out to Jiangxia commenced, it seemed to Zhou Yu that everyone was behaving very strangely.

That Xiao Qiao would be buoyant, Da Qiao nervous, and Sun Ce conflicted, was not unexpected, although it was painful to see Xiao Qiao so unaffected by their imminent separation. But there was something off about both the buoyancy and the nervousness, and Sun Ce didn’t seem to be displaying his usual hot and cold bounce between eagerness for the fight and longing to stay in Da Qiao’s embrace. Instead he was running hot about the fight all the time, but inexplicably guilty at times. Almost like he was trying to hide something from Zhou Yu.

He managed to steal an afternoon for another tea lesson, this time on jasmine tea. When they were both sipping their cups, he complimented her again on her teaching skills.

“Yeah, well! I told you it wasn’t difficult. You’ll make it better than me soon…”

“No, yours will always taste the best to me,” he said firmly.

She turned pink again. “ _Kui bu gan dang_ (you praise me too much).”

It was a rote, set phrase of compliment denial, yet she somehow seemed to speaking the literal meaning of the phrase—“I’m ashamed and dare not accept it.” But because it was a set phrase, he couldn’t call this out.

“Is there anything I could teach you?” he said, to change the subject. “Teacher Qiao is so generous with her time, Teacher Zhou should be too.”

She laughed and looked more natural. “Hmm, I seem to remember Teacher Zhou thought teachers should hit their students!”

 _I would never hurt you_ , he wanted to say, but that would probably put her right back into embarrassment again. Instead he said lightly, “I’m sure you were never such a bad student to need any punishment.”

“Are you kidding? I was the worst!” she said. “And the worst part is that my teachers could never tell the difference between what was me being lazy and what was me being stupid.” She sighed. “There really isn’t much you could manage to teach me.”

“I’m sure that’s not so. How about music?”

“Music?” she looked surprised, and then suddenly very suspicious. “Has my sister been talking to you?!”

“Talking to me about what?” he said, his face perfectly composed with mild surprise.

She flushed. “Never mind.”

“Of course if you don’t want to, we can do something else, but you have such an excellent sense of rhythm, precision, and grace, in your dance, that I would be very surprised if you wouldn’t excel at music.”

“Ah, I would like it if I could, but… I’ve tried, but I can’t seem to get beyond the basics… it doesn’t sound anything like when you do it…”

“Do what?” he said, careful not to betray that he knew what she was referring to.

“Oh, sorry. The flute.”

“You play the flute?” Mild, pleasant surprise.

“Ah, well, I tried to learn, but… I threw my flute and broke it,” she said in an embarrassed rush. “I got… I got frustrated…”

“Learning something new can be very frustrating,” he agreed evenly, as if he didn’t know what she had actually been frustrated about when she broke the flute. “You can try my flute, as long as you promise not to break it purposefully.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that!” she promised. “You’d really let me try yours?”

“Certainly. Everything I have is yours, Xiao Qiao.” She blushed and turned away, and he wondered if he’d spoken a bit too intensely. Again trying to be as light as possible, he added, “Of course if you’d prefer your own flute, I’ll purchase one for you.”

“Ooh, could I have a jade one?”

“Jade flutes are pretty to look at but very difficult to play well,” he explained. “Stone doesn’t resonate the way that bamboo does, so they will always sound inferior. And they are expensive. If you throw your instruments every time you get frustrated, we may have to sell our lands to keep you in flutes.”

“I wouldn’t throw it every time I get frustrated!” she pouted, and he grinned.

“Well, display your restraint to me,” he said, getting up to retrieve the instrument, since they were taking tea in the next room. 

When he returned and handed it to her, she said, “Could you teach me how to use my tongue like you do?”

His face must have flushed, because she said with confusion, “What? What did I say?”

Recovering, he said faintly, “Ah yes… tonguing… that’s… that’s a little advanced…”

“You make the notes sound so beautiful, like birds,” she said. “I want to be able to do that.”

“Well, you can, but I think it’s better not to try to learn how to tongue and finger at the same time,” he said. _My god, the flute is worse than tea for double entendre!_ “Why don’t you play something for me and then I’ll know what you need to work on.”

She raised the flute to her lips, but then hesitated. “Are you sure you want to do this, Lord Zhou Yu? They say you’re displeased if you hear even one wrong note.”

“All the more reason why I should make sure my wife learns how to play well,” he said. “I’ll be patient with you.”

Xiao Qiao brightened, and then played the piece he had heard through her door not that long before. This time she made several mistakes, more as the piece went on, as was common with students, whose nervousness compounded with each mistake. When she finished, she hung her head in embarrassment.

“You played through the entire piece and didn’t give up,” he said. “That’s the kind of determination you need to learn how to play well.”

He only had time to discuss briefly her imprecision in notes that required half-open holes—how sometimes she covered too much, and sometimes not enough—before a servant fetched him to meet with Ling Cao, who had just arrived.

“Lord Zhou Yu,” he said, with an elegant bow, “may I present my son Ling Tong? With your permission, of course, I would like him to join me in this battle.”

Ling Tong was a youth not much older than Xiao Qiao, lanky and not quite full-grown. He was stylishly dressed and made a very smooth bow; clearly a confident youth, perhaps a cocky one. Zhou Yu smiled at him. “Your first battle, Ling Tong?”

“Yes my lord,” he said, “but I have assisted my father in skirmishes with the Shanyue many times.”

“A few times,” said Ling Cao, indulgently ruffling the boy’s carefully arranged ponytail, and the boy flushed, pulling away to straighten the hairsticks his father had knocked askew.

“I trust your judgement of soldiers, Ling Cao,” said Zhou Yu. “Do you want him in the vanguard with you?”

“Yes, my lord. No better way to begin one’s military career, I think, than in a vanguard!”

It could also have been called the quickest way to end one’s military career, but the Ling clan were famous for their gallantry and bravery, as martial as the Sun clan was. Clearly Ling Cao intended for his son to follow in his footsteps. “I look forward to hearing of your accomplishments, Ling Tong. Please excuse your father and me as we discuss the upcoming strategy. Feel free to walk the grounds.”

After briefing Ling Cao on the plan, the two men walked out onto the grounds themselves. It didn’t take long to be attracted by the sound of laughter.

“Is wiggling my butt like this really necessary?” said Xiao Qiao.

“It is not wiggling your butt,” laughed Ling Tong. “You’re just staying loose.”

“You’re definitely wiggling your butt,” argued Xiao Qiao.

“ _You_ are wiggling your butt; I’m simply shifting my weight.”

“That’s what makes your butt wiggle!”

“Xiao Qiao, should you really be talking about your butt so much?” said Da Qiao, trying to be stern but unable to totally keep her amusement out of her voice.

“It doesn’t count if it’s about fighting!”

Zhou Yu and Ling Cao came around the copse of trees and saw Xiao Qiao and Ling Tong, their weapons exchanged. Ling Tong had the iron fan closed and was demonstrating his usual stance as if it were one segment of his weapon, and Xiao Qiao was attempting to mimic it with the actual segmented staff. Da Qiao was sitting in the shade of the trees, pointedly but not convincingly reading a book, her pugil sticks sitting beside her.

Ling Tong gave a correct but relaxed bow when he saw them. “Lord Zhou Yu, Father. Finished already?”

“Lord Zhou Yu!” said Xiao Qiao joyously, still attempting to mimic Ling Tong’s fighting stance. Ling Tong’s message about the difference between shifting one’s weight and wiggling one’s butt was clearly lost on her; the little panda on her behind was shaking back and forth. “Master Ling Tong has been letting me try his _sanjiegun_! Isn’t it cool?”

“I’m not sure if cool is the correct word, my dear,” he said, with a calmness he was a long way from feeling as he watched Ling Tong’s eyes gazing at Xiao Qiao’s bouncing chest. To that young man he said, “I see you met my wife and sister-in-law.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize…” Ling Tong was a bit flustered, and he bowed to Da Qiao. “Forgive me, madam.”

“I _am_ married, but not to him,” laughed Da Qiao. “I’m Lord Sun Ce’s wife. My sister is Lord Zhou Yu’s wife.”

“I told you about our lord and his brother marrying the Qiao sisters,” scolded Ling Cao, in response to that young man’s stunned look.

“I guess I forgot,” he said with a flush.

“Weren’t interested in any news that wasn’t military, more like,” said Ling Cao. “Give the young lady back her fan, boy, and let’s get going.”

“Aw, leaving so soon?” pouted Xiao Qiao, but she exchanged weapons with Ling Tong. “Well, I’m sure I’ll see you again, and then you can demonstrate that grapple you were talking about!”

Ling Cao gave his son a slap upside the head as they walked away, causing Xiao Qiao to tilt her head in confusion. “Lord Zhou Yu, what’s that old man hitting Ling Tong for?”

“I think he felt his son’s behaviour was inappropriately flirtatious, considering that you are my wife,” said Zhou Yu.

His wife scoffed. “That wasn’t flirting. All boys talk like that!”

Zhou Yu was surprised to see that even sensible Da Qiao was nodding in agreement. Apparently they both took their extreme beauty for granted to such an extent that it did not occur to them not to be met with open admiration, lustful gazes, and teasing comments wherever they went. Perhaps this was part of why neither of them was the slightest bit vain; they assumed that this was simply what it was to be female.

But if shameless gawking and flirting was how Xiao Qiao expected uninterested men to act, then what did she think of Zhou Yu’s restrained behaviour? It started to make more sense why she had felt that he was disgusted by her. At the same time, he was at a loss as to how to show his genuine interest if that was the case, without overwhelming her with it.

Xiao Qiao frowned, and Zhou Yu realized that he had been standing there silently for an awkwardly long period of time. “I’m sorry, I suppose I’m distracted by how much there is to do before we leave tomorrow. I should probably check on how the packing is going.”

“There’s no need!” said Da Qiao. “I saw to it myself this morning. Everything is perfectly arranged!”

“Yup yup!” said Xiao Qiao. “It’s gonna be a good campaign!”

Zhou Yu felt that nagging doubt at the back of his mind again as he looked at them, but still could not put his finger on it.

“Hey, you wanna go for a walk?” said Xiao Qiao, scampering over to him and putting her arm through his. Well. More like hooking his forearm into her armpit.

———

Zhou Yu should have suspected a trap when he was roused about an hour before his planned (and already too early) rising by an urgent message from Sun Ce, and then when he got to his sworn brother, the urgent matter was something that didn’t need to be done so early, and definitely not by him. He tried to refuse, even, but Sun Ce, acting harassed and overwhelmed, had merely barked out that it was an order and dismissed him. He was addled by the earliness of the hour and by the fact that his deceiver was Sun Ce, who, despite having a name that literally meant ‘plan,’ couldn’t scheme his way out of a paper bag. Or at least that’s what he would have said, but his brother got him good.

By the time he boarded the flagship, he was so pissed off that this had prevented him from getting to say goodbye to Xiao Qiao that he attempted to go right past Sun Ce and to his cabin, but his sworn brother intercepted him.

“Hey, what’s the rush?”

Zhou Yu was too furious to be concerned about the many ears that would hear this. “I went to bed late last night and I was awoken at an unreasonable hour. I need to go to my cabin to rest. Unless you expect me to be doing some other urgent task that is uniquely suited to my talents such as swabbing the deck or counting the arrows.”

“Ah, don’t rest yet!” said Sun Ce. “You’ve got to… to have a drink with me first! Toast our success! Hey, little brother!”

Sun Quan turned, painfully eager to be included. “Yes, brother?”

“How about a drink? Where’s that bodyguard of yours? Invite him too.” He turned back to Zhou Yu. “Who else? Jiang Qin, for sure. Jiang Qin!”

“Here, my lord,” said the former pirate, approaching with a bow. “What do you need?”

“Drinking buddies!”

Zhou Yu sighed. How was it that Sun Ce managed to be such a goof without making anyone lose their respect for him?

After a cheerful session with a few wine bottles, Zhou Yu’s anger had mostly lessened. He was even allowing himself to think that maybe it was for the best that he and Xiao Qiao hadn’t had a definite goodbye. He was actually feeling like they were making some kind of progress, but he still wanted more from her than she was ready to give. Getting a cheerful wave, like he was her brother or father instead of her beloved, would have hurt badly. It would probably be a few months until they saw each other again… maybe she would have developed even more, have thought about things, greet him with a kiss—

“Lady Qiao is asking about you, my lord,” a servant said to Sun Ce.

Zhou Yu’s head turned so swiftly that he felt like it could have snapped off. “Lady Qiao?”

Sun Ce said, “Tell her we’ll be along shortly,” and got up. “C’mon, Gongjin! Sufficiently relaxed now?”

When they were a sufficient distance away from the officers, Zhou Yu permitted himself to hiss, “You should be counting yourself lucky that I’m _not_ sufficiently relaxed to kick your ass off this fucking boat. And yes, I remember very well that you can’t swim. How could you bring your wife along? I’ll skip all the reasons I gave you before, because you already know them and you’ve apparently decided they don’t matter after all, but Xiao Qiao was counting on having her sister with her for company. At least if you had told me, I could have prepared her. She must be—”

“Lord Zhou Yu! Lord Zhou Yu!” Xiao Qiao waved excitedly at them from the stairs, while Da Qiao, behind her, cringed. “Lord Sun Ce, I know you told us not to come out until you said so, but the servant said you were coming and I just couldn’t wait anymore! Did you tell him? Was he happy?” She paused, and suddenly looked concerned. “Lord Zhou Yu, are you well?”

Zhou Yu felt for a moment like he was indeed going to faint or vomit or explode or _something_ , and when his ears stopped humming with blood and his vision cleared Sun Ce had somehow managed to put the women between him and Zhou Yu. “Bofu, you _coward.”_

“I’d better get him to our cabin,” said Xiao Qiao worriedly, walking up to him and taking his arm. “I mean, calling Lord Sun Ce a coward, when everyone knows his problem is the opposite one… you feel clammy, my lord, you should lie down.”

They had left shore a few hours ago, and it wasn’t like they could just dock the boat and drop the women off, nor could he abandon the navy and escort them back—oh shit. Oh _shit_.

_Our cabin?_

———

“I’m sorry!” she blurted as soon as she closed the door behind her. “Lord Sun Ce said you wouldn’t be mad, but you are, aren’t you? I should have told you…”

“Yes, you should have,” he said, and even with her flinch he couldn’t reduce the anger in his voice. Her head dropped and her fingers were twisting into each other, and he forced himself to take a breath. “I’m mostly angry at Sun Ce, though. He knows what battle is like and you don’t. Also, he told you to keep this a secret from me, which he absolutely had no right to do, but in a way he’s your lord and so he has a certain amount of authority over you, so that lessens your culpability further.” He took another breath, and there was a knock at the door. “Not now,” he told it harshly.

“Gongjin, let me in please,” said Sun Ce’s voice, sounding very apologetic for him.

Zhou Yu ripped open the door. “Where’s Da Qiao?”

“In our cabin.”

Zhou Yu looked at his wife, still twisting her fingers. “Do you know where that is, Xiao Qiao?”

“Yes, my lord,” she said softly.

“Good, because that’s where you’ll be sleeping. Go there now,” he said. “Bofu, you can move your stuff in here with me.”

Sun Ce looked for a brief moment as if he wanted to hit Zhou Yu, which would have suited Zhou Yu just fine, but he controlled it as Xiao Qiao darted out, merely slamming the door with a bit more force than necessary. “Gongjin, I know you must be wanting to kill me right now. I was planning to talk to you about it privately first. I don’t know why Da Qiao got so nervous—anyway that doesn’t matter—“

“No it fucking doesn’t,” said Zhou Yu, in a voice that Sun Ce rarely heard, and never directed at him. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this angry at anyone in my entire life. I’m supposed to be your chief advisor—more than your advisor, your _brother._ We talked about this and you agreed with me that it was a bad idea. Now you’ve gone against our decision, which you have the right to do, but to deceive me about it? To tell my own wife to deceive me about it? You had no right to do that.”

Sun Ce sighed and leaned against the closed door. “I knew you would be angry, but the problem is that I also know that I’m right, but I knew I didn’t have the words to convince you. You would have fought me every step of the way and eventually you would have come down to the fact that I didn’t have the right to tell you what to do with your wife and I wouldn’t have been able to answer that. So that’s why I did it this way.”

“You don’t know that you’re right, you’re just willing to throw that aside so you can get your cock wet,” he snarled.

“Gongjin, I told you I wasn’t thinking with my cock for once alright?” He sighed again, and Zhou Yu felt his blood boil at the way his supposed sworn brother was treating this as a frustrating obstacle instead of a mammoth betrayal. “I never agreed with you it was a bad idea, remember? I just gave in because I know you haven’t consummated the marriage yet and that you didn’t want to make her uncomfortable. But I talked with Da Qiao and she—“

“You _what_?!”

Sun Ce was startled. “I talked with Da Qiao about it, what’s wrong with that? I talk with her about everything.”

“You talk with her about me having sex with her sister?”

“No, I talk with her about you _not_ having sex with her sister.”

Zhou Yu stared at him, and Sun Ce laughed uncomfortably.

“Gongjin… when it’s you, you’ll get it, ok? You just… you talk to them. I’d be an idiot not to talk to her about this, anyway. She knows Xiao Qiao better than anyone. The only catch is that she doesn’t know how to bring the subject up bluntly with her. Da Qiao says she’s sure Xiao Qiao is falling in love with you, it’s just not clear if she’s ready for sex. She doesn’t pick up on any of the subtle references that Da Qiao tries to make to desire, but I don’t know if that proves anything, really. To be frank, your wife isn’t the sharpest spear in the armoury.”

Zhou Yu’s mouth twisted to hold back a smile. Xiao Qiao wasn’t exactly stupid—couldn’t have been, with her unexpected depths of perception when it came to things like the tea ceremony—but she did say really stupid things sometimes…

_“Hey, Lord Zhou Yu, did you know? Fruits and vegetables come from the earth.”_

_He stared at her. She had bounded into his study, and was holding out a plate of sliced melon._

_“Uh… yes. I did know that, Xiao Qiao.”_

_“Here, it’s a snack for you! Do you like melons?” The plate was placed reverently atop some very important documents. “Hey, Lord Zhou Yu, you’ve got that look on your face again…”_

His mouth twisted harder, but he would not laugh. There was nothing funny about this. He bit his cheek hard until he felt he had control back, then spoke. “I see. So what is the plan here—skip the hinting and just present her with my naked body? What am I supposed to do if she recoils? Sleep on the deck?”

“You’re thinking too much,” said Sun Ce with a hint of his usual bravado, crossing his arms. “You’re overanalyzing everything she does and everything you do and it’s making you act like some kind of weird detached eunuch thing. Very attentive but not exactly going to wake anything up, you know? But if you’re sharing a cabin, then you’re going to have to actually touch her.”

Zhou Yu looked away from Sun Ce, at the bed. It was relatively large for a bed on a boat, but that still meant it was very small for two people. Suddenly he envisioned himself lying in it, with Xiao Qiao lying quiet and beautiful in his arms… looking up at him with those wide, innocent eyes… crying and saying, “Lord Zhou Yu, it hurts—”

He was shuddering. There was a tiny desk with a chair and he sank down into it.

“Gongjin?” Sun Ce’s bravado was totally gone again. “Are you actually sick?”

“You don’t understand, Bofu,” he said, barely audibly, without turning around. “When I said I wasn’t an animal, I was wrong. I was so wrong.”

Sun Ce’s rough hand was on his shoulder. “You wouldn’t hurt her. I know you wouldn’t, ok? You love her.”

Zhou Yu put his head in his hands. “Tell everyone I’m sick. Tell her I’m sick, Bofu. I want to be alone, alright?”

The hand withdrew. “Alright, Gongjin. Just… I’ll have food sent, ok? We’ll probably be fighting soon, so…” The words trailed off. “I’ll find somewhere else to sleep and Xiao Qiao can stay with my wife tonight.”

He couldn’t even nod. When the door closed, he slammed his hand onto the desk, groaned, and decided to try to rest.

———

In the dream he was a wolf. Well, sort of. He had a wolf’s ears and a wolf’s tail and a wolf’s ravening, bestial heart, but most of him was still human. Too human.

When he came upon her she was sitting in a meadow on a blanket with a picnic basket, the red bow of her hood tied over her milky throat. She turned and smiled when she saw him. “Oh, Lord Wolf, I’ve been waiting for you!”

“Aren’t you afraid?” he said as he circled her.

She titled her head. “No, of course not. Why would I be?”

“I eat little girls like you.”

She laughed. “I’m not a little girl! Come here and let me pet you.”

He bounded up to her and placed his head on her chest, and she scratched behind his ears and laughed again as he gave a low, satisfied growl. He looked up at her face and it was flushed.

“Are you sure you’re not a little girl?”

Her eyes were shining. “Taste me and find out, Lord Wolf.”

He raised his face, at first merely brushing his lips against her cheeks and nose, then against her lips, nuzzling her. She sank backwards onto the blanket and he pinned each tiny hand down with his own clawed ones as he pressed his lips onto hers. She opened her mouth to him and his tongue accepted the invitation greedily, sliding against hers. He licked her lips and growled again, and she giggled.

“Well, Lord Wolf? Do I taste like a little girl?”

“No, but I still want… I still want…” He faltered, and he tried to let go of her hands, but her fingers were remarkably strong and intertwined with his.

“Don’t run away from me, Lord Zhou Yu,” she whispered. “Please. I want you. I want this.”

Unwillingly, his teeth had gripped the end of the bow and he was pulling it open, exposing her to him. She sighed in satisfaction and closed her eyes.

His mouth was hovering over her neck and he was panting, his tongue running over enormous fangs that felt so strange and wrong in his mouth. 

Was he going to kiss her throat? Was he going to rip it open?

He woke up before he could do either, and couldn’t figure out exactly why he had awoken, until he heard the sounds of running feet on the deck overhead. Zhou Yu quickly got up and dressed, wondering what time it was and why no one had come to wake him up, even if he was supposedly sick.

“What’s going on?” he demanded of a sailor, gripping his bo staff tightly.

“We ran into the vanguard, Lord Zhou Yu,” said the sailor with a bow, nearly dropping the rope he was carrying. “Huang Zu’s forces were set up at Xiakou. The vanguard panicked them into fleeing and we’re in pursuit.”

Zhou Yu swore. Sun Ce should have woken him up for this! “Where’s Lord Sun Ce?”

“He joined the pursuit, my lord.”

Of course he did, that impulsive idiot. He wasn’t going to let a chance to avenge his father’s death slip away. “Am I the only officer left on the flagship?”

“Master Lu Su has been giving command, my lord, but if you are recovered I am sure he will cede to you.”

“No, I’d better join the pursuit,” he said. “I’ll just tell the ladies what’s going on.”

He knocked on the cabin door. No answer. He knocked again.

“Xiao Qiao? Sister-in-law?”

He tried the door and it was unlocked. There was no one inside.

He raced back up onto the deck. “Lu Su, where are the women?”

Lu Su looked disapproving. “Our lord’s wife said she was seasick and wanted to go ashore. I didn’t exactly approve, but she wasn’t asking my permission.” He pointed to the shore where a small camp had been set up to support the flagship. “I assume they’re around there somewhere, probably picking flowers or something.”

Zhou Yu’s breathing and heart rate started to go back to normal. “Alright. You keep command here. I’ll just check on the women and then join the pursuit. Our lord might be getting himself into trouble. We hadn’t discussed a plan for this scenario.”

Lu Su laughed. “That’s what I told the women, my lord.”

Something about that offhand statement had Zhou Yu’s mouth going dry again.

———

That they weren’t in the small camp just by the flagship somehow didn’t surprise him. He rode his horse hard along the cliff, following the vague direction that the sailors thought that Sun Ce had gone off. Somehow, he just knew that this was what the women had done.

When he came upon them, they were fighting down below on the shore, and he pulled his horse up abruptly. He checked the impulse to call out to them; it was just them and a whole lot of enemy soldiers, and the last thing he wanted was to distract them and leave them vulnerable when he couldn’t actually get to them.

They were holding their own remarkably well, especially considering that Da Qiao was acting like she did not at all want to be anywhere near there.

“Stay away from me will you!” she screamed, and somehow unleashed a powerful attack from her pugil sticks that cleared away all the enemies approaching her.

“This was _your_ idea, sis!” called Xiao Qiao, merrily whacking some soldiers into unconsciousness with her fan. “You should at least enjoy it!”

“I’m not enjoying this! Lord Sun Ce is in trouble!”

“He’s a big goat, he can look after himself.”

“ _Lord Sun Ce does not look like a goat!”_

The enemy soldiers were many in number, but they seemed to have no clue how to fight women and no killing intent, even when the women were taking out dozens of their comrades. Zhou Yu tore himself away from watching and tried to figure out if there was a way down the cliff nearby. He found one very steep path… well path was too generous a word. Maybe a path for an actual goat. He wouldn’t be much help if he tumbled down the cliff and broke his neck. He kept looking.

The sound of bells jerked his attention back to the beach. A group of tattooed men with bells on were rapidly approaching. Pirates, and not just any pirates, but Gan Ning of the bells and his crew! Zhou Yu had heard that they had signed on with Huang Zu. They had a reputation for being utterly merciless. He swore under his breath and started taking the goat path, concentrating all his focus on it, although he couldn’t stop from hearing what was going on below.

“Whoa, what do we have here?” said a cocky voice with a laugh. “You girls get lost or something?”

“Where’s Lord Sun Ce?” cried Da Qiao.

“Funny, I’ve been wondering the same thing! I took out one of your commanders already, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. I figure if I go right to the top, my lord will have to notice me. So he’s not this way, huh? Ok, you get off easy this time.”

“I won’t let you _near_ Lord Sun Ce.”

Zhou Yu had never heard Da Qiao sounding so bloodthirsty, and he could have cursed again as some rocks came loose and he nearly lost his footing.

“I don’t know whether I should kill you or kiss you!” marvelled the man’s voice, and the sounds of battle restarted abruptly. Shit, shit, shit!

When he got down to the beach, Da Qiao was duelling Gan Ning directly, while Xiao Qiao was more or less taking on the rest of the pirates. They both seemed to be doing well, but he knew exactly how just one wrong blow could change everything.

“That hurt!” said Xiao Qiao, and suddenly all reason left him.

He was absolutely enraged. He felt like he was literally on fire. His staff was whirling and he was beyond his own senses as the enemies fell down before him like kindling.

“Retreat ain’t so bad! See ya!” he heard as he came back to himself, panting, with a whole lot of dead enemies around him and (presumably) Gan Ning and a few of his cronies fleeing back the way they came.

“Amazing! That’s my man!”

He turned and Xiao Qiao was standing there, her face flushed with exertion and her eyes wide with admiration and… and…

“Xiao Qiao…” he said. He couldn’t stop staring at her, and he forced himself to say something to explain it. “I had no idea you could fight so well.”

She didn’t seem to be paying attention to his words. “Lord Zhou Yu…” she breathed, walking towards him. “Do you… are you finally… you see me?”

“Finally?” he managed somehow, mesmerized by her approach. “Xiao Qiao, I can’t see anything but you. Even when I close my eyes I see you. I love you.”

She stopped just shy of his arms and her eyes filled with tears. “I love you, Lord Zhou Yu! I never… I hoped, but I never believed…”

He pulled her into his arms and kissed her passionately and she responded, she _responded_. He felt her hands pulling and pushing on his back and sides as if she wanted him even closer than pressed against her…

“L-lord Zhou Yu?” said Da Qiao tentatively, breaking them out of their rapture, although Zhou Yu wouldn’t let his wife go completely. “Do you know if Lord Sun Ce is alright? Master Lu Su said he was in trouble and he didn’t even seem to care!”

Zhou Yu would have added Lu Su to his list of people to smack around but right now he was feeling so damn good that he even felt like pardoning Sun Ce. “I don’t know where he is, but if the enemy was looking for him and they didn’t find him yet, he must not be this way. We should go back to the flagship and regroup. He may even be there.”

———

They ran into Sun Ce on the way back to the flagship and he was fighting off an attempted ambush and looking terrified, which surprised Zhou Yu. But when he saw his wife, his terror vanished.

“Da Qiao! Quit playing around and get back here!” he yelled, but his voice was cracking with relief.

“My lord! You’re okay!”

The couple battled towards each other, Sun Ce cracking skulls with his tonfas and Da Qiao blasting enemies out of the way with her pugil sticks. “Of course I’m okay! Were you worried about me? I’m the one who’s supposed to take care of you!”

Xiao Qiao laughed as she flipped some enemies onto their backs with a blast of wind from her fan, where Zhou Yu could easily eliminate them. “We should all fight together like this more often!”

Sun Ce and Da Qiao had reached each other now and were fighting back to back, and Sun Ce was laughing too. “This is like our first date, huh Da Qiao?”

“My lord!”

The laugh was rueful. “I’m sorry for making you worry, Da Qiao. I know you don’t really like to fight, but… wow, you look damn hot doing it!”

“ _My lord!_ ” she protested, turning as red as her coat. “I can’t concentrate with you saying things like that!”

Zhou Yu finished off the last subofficer and the remaining peons started to flee. “Any sign of Huang Zu, Bofu?”

Sun Ce sighed with frustration. “No, and Ling Cao’s been killed.”

“Killed?” gasped Da Qiao.

“Is Master Ling Tong alright?” said Xiao Qiao.

“I don’t know, sis,” said Sun Ce. “I wasn’t there and I haven’t seen him. He’s out for his father’s killer, not that I blame him. They say it was Gan Ning of the bells.”

———

It was a strange mixture of joy and agony on the main deck when they returned to the flagship. They’d forced a superior force with a great tactical position into full retreat and taken out many enemy ships and men, but they had lost one of their own most valued officers and the true target had escaped and was probably walled up within the defences of Jiangxia by now.

Zhou Tai had carried Ling Tong’s limp body onto the ship, causing them all to fear the worst, but the tall, quiet youth dispelled this. “I had to knock him out to retrieve him. His arm is broken but he would not quit.”

“He’ll make his father proud,” said Sun Ce, tightly. “Have the medics get the arm in a splint now before he wakes up.”

Sun Quan was hanging around, looking embarrassed, and even more so when Sun Ce clapped him on the shoulder. “How’d it go, little brother? Huh? At least Zhou Tai didn’t have to carry you back this time.”

“I didn’t do anything important,” he muttered.

“Well, you didn’t get hurt or captured, so we’re making progress,” shrugged Sun Ce. “Let’s eat and get some sleep, tomorrow we move in to besiege Jiangxia.”

Zhou Yu touched Xiao Qiao’s shoulder because she was frozen, watching where Zhou Tai had disappeared carrying Ling Tong’s unconscious body.

“He looked so helpless,” she said softly. “He must be hurting so much… to watch someone you love die…”

He pulled her into his arms. “Does it frighten you?”

“It does, but…” She pushed on him a little, just enough to have him loosen his hold so that she could look up into his eyes. “It makes me want to… to not waste time. Do you know what I mean, Lord Zhou Yu?”

———

He had always associated closing his eyes with sexual ecstasy, but he couldn’t keep from staring at her beautiful, adoring face as he undressed her. She didn’t look afraid or even nervous as she worked on undressing him as well. “How do you get this thing off?” she said to his belt.

He guided her hands to the hidden clasp. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

“Yes!” she laughed.

“You’re not afraid?”

She tilted her head. “I think you’re the one that’s afraid, Lord Zhou Yu!”

It was a ridiculous idea, that he would be afraid to have sex… it should make him laugh… but she was right. He was afraid. “It’s because I don’t want to hurt you, Xiao Qiao.”

“Is there something we could do to make it easier for you?” 

Then he did laugh. “This is all backwards… I’m supposed to be reassuring you…”

“But I’m _not_ afraid and you are, so!” She grinned. “See, we’re a team!”

It was strange to be so amused, aroused, and terrified all at the same time. He licked his dry lips. “I guess I should be brave if you are.”

She pulled the tucked in ends out of his loincloth and her eyes widened as it fell away, and he thought this time she was afraid, but she said, “It comes off that easily? Does it ever, like, untuck when you’re fighting?”

“Uh… it never has…”

“See, mine is tied,” she said, undoing the strings on her _xieyi_. “That seems a lot more sensible to me.”

“Are you afraid of anything?” he said, undoing her ponytail and running his hands through her hair.

She leaned forward and whispered, “ _Spiders._ ”

———

“Heyyyyyyy,” said Sun Ce, when Zhou Yu left his cabin in the morning.

“Shut up,” he replied, but he couldn’t help smiling. Then his mouth twitched as he attempted to stop smiling and failed. “Don’t make fun of me.”

“But it’s sooooo easy,” laughed Sun Ce. “C’mon, I’ve been holding back on kicking you when you were down. I have so much kicking to deliver now!”

“We have work to do,” Zhou Yu said sternly. “We routed Huang Zu, but he escaped with his miserable skin. This could be a long campaign, especially because Cao Cao has his eye on Liu Biao’s territory as well, once he finishes dealing with Yuan Shao and his sons.”

“How can you talk strategy after the night you had?” Sun Ce waggled his eyebrows and bumped Zhou Yu’s staff with his tonfa. “By the way, you need to work on your dirty talk. You called her darling at least fifteen times. I know because I started counting.”

Zhou Yu went white with anger. “You were eavesdropping on us?!”

“Eavesdropping hell, I could hear you with the pillow over my head!” Sun Ce laughed. “She’s as loud as my wife but you were even louder! Never would have expected that, I can’t remember you ever being like that with any of the women we chased before.”

Zhou Yu went from white to crimson. “You’re kidding… I was that loud?”

“Yeah and you cockblocked me, as long as I’m making complaints. Da Qiao was totally down for it until she heard you two going at it.”

Zhou Yu laughed, embarrassed. “I’m… sorry?”

“Yeah and since she wasn’t going for it I was going to take care of business by myself, but she caught me and accused me of fantasizing about her sister so now I’m in the doghouse. You at least owe me some details!”

Zhou Yu stiffened a little. “You don’t want details for a fantasy, right?”

“Don’t get possessive! I’m not interested in yours that way, I’m just curious!”

“And perverted.”

“That too. C’mon Gongjin! You know I’ll get it out of you eventually once you’ve had enough to drink, tell me now. Was it worth the wait? Huh?”

“Yes… she’s so different… I never would have thought a girl like that would catch my heart…”

“Like what?” goaded Sun Ce, enjoying making his usually unflappable sworn brother turn redder and redder.

“Cute, like she is,” he muttered. “She’s… she’s even cute down there…”

“Did you seriously just call it ‘down there’?” guffawed Sun Ce. “Are you sure _you’re_ old enough to be having sex?”

“Ugh, Bofu, you make everything disgusting.” Zhou Yu shook his head. “You’ve got yours and I’ve got mine, let’s just leave it at that ok?”

“Haha, ok,” laughed Sun Ce. “But come up with some good fake stories at least, I need back-up in tormenting my little brother with the joys of married sex.”

“Pervert!”

“Prude!”

The two young men pushed at each other and laughed as they walked, enjoying feeling young, loved, and victorious, while in their cabins their wives got ready for the day, both of them happily thinking that they would never leave their husbands’ sides again. All of them felt ready for anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The _xieyi_ was a Han dynasty form of women's underwear that tied like a string bikini on both sides. The loincloth would have been similar to a Japanese _fundoshi._

**Author's Note:**

> The dream scenario is inspired by the Wu fairy tale DLC costume with Zhou Yu as the Big Bad Wolf and Xiao Qiao as Little Red Riding Hood.
> 
> "I won't let you _near_ Lord Sun Ce."/"I don't know whether I should kill you or kiss you!" is an exchange between Da Qiao and Gan Ning in the battle of Xiakou in DW5. "Retreat ain't so bad! See ya!" and "Da Qiao! Quit playing around and get back here!" is also from DW5. Otherwise I think all the quotes are from DW8. "Hey, did you know? Fruits and vegetables come from the earth" is from DW8 Ambition mode and is my favourite "Xiao Qiao says dumb things" quote.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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